


Rite of Passage

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:18:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year, a Slytherin student gets lost in the maze of corridors in the dungeons, trying to find the common room.  Perhaps for Slytherins, a sense of direction is even more important than ambition and greed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rite of Passage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justonemorefic](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=justonemorefic).
  * Inspired by [And Capers Ensue](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3792) by justonemorefic. 



This was why Mortimer reckoned that he should've practised living in a castle before he came to Hogwarts. He could've lived with Auntie Marmalade. She had a huge castle, and she probably wouldn't even notice he was there. There were seven different kitchens and a bajillion rooms and he could just sneak in the back one day and then just...never come out. Wouldn't even have to say hello. Wouldn't even have to listen to her talk about his father's childhood! Alas, that hadn't happened and now he was paying for it.

It was only his second day of school ever and he was already lost. He couldn't see anyone. It was getting dark. He didn't know how to make the lamps go on with magic because he was only a little Firstie and blimey, what was that?

Just a shadow, Mort. Just a shadow.

Look, it wasn't like he hadn't paid attention when the Slytherin Prefect had led them all to the common room last night after the Welcome Feast. He had been paying plenty of attention. But he'd also been in a sort of food-induced stupor and his concentration kept getting interrupted by thoughts about all the food he'd just eaten and mm, that treacle tart was gorgeous and the pork and--

And now every corridor looked the same and he was shivering.

The dungeons weren't a nice place to get lost in Hogwarts. In fact, had Mortimer had a better idea of what the rest of the castle was like, he would have known that it rivalled possibly only getting lost near the South Tower (because there were things there that feasted on Firsties for elevenses, they did). As it was, Mortimer wasn't thick. The sun was going down and he didn't want to be stuck out after dark. He'd heard someone say that Filch, the caretaker, had thumbscrews. Where was everyone? Surely there ought to be other people wandering these corridors. First Years, Prefects, anyone. All Mort had for company was his own breath (he couldn't see it in front of him, not yet, but this was Scotland and he wasn't looking forward to seeing how much the temperature dropped once the sun went down) and an ominous dripping sound that never seemed to get any quieter.

There was a portrait up ahead, and Mort rushed towards it, hoping it could help him. The portraits back home were usually helpful, so surely this one would be too? When he got there, all he could see was a richly-embroidered chair and something in the corner that looked like a mouse skull. Perhaps he wouldn't wait around for its occupant to return. Hurrying on, he employed the tactic of 'if you're going somewhere, then at least there's a chance you're making progress'. The problem with this tactic was that it worked the other way too, and he was slowly getting more and more lost.

How long had he been here? Hours, he was sure. He'd left his watch in the common room ("Mortimer, now that you're off to Hogwarts, you're going to have to take better care of your belongings. If you lose things in the castle, you might not get them back," his mother had said, but he hadn't listen to her.) but that dripping sound had been a constant for ages.

Maybe he'd perish here, lost in the dark, deep recesses of Hogwarts castle. Mortimer Forney, destined for great things but defeated by a bunch of corridors...

He was getting hungry. And thirsty. He had a chocolate frog on him, but no water and even if he could find the source of that sodding dripping sound, it probably wouldn't be fit to drink. The darkness was closing in on him, he was going! Maybe he'd become a ghost, wander these corridors forever and haunt them until he actually knew the way.

Mort blinked, and his vision cleared. Not as close to death as he thought.

He was still hungry, though. The chocolate frog was guzzled quickly, and it was only once he was finished that he realised he should've rationed it. Nibbled every fifth corridor. There were so many twists and turns down here. Perhaps he shouldn't have been in Slytherin after all. Sure, he was ambitious and his parents had both been in Slytherin and he thought the colour green went quite well with his complexion, but clearly Sytherins needed a sense of direction. Mortimer didn't have one.

He’d lost track of how many turns he’d taken since the chocolate frog. It was properly dark now, and torches had come on of their own accord, but that just served to make it spookier, throwing shadows in his path that loomed and twisted of their own accord. He wasn’t scared, though. Nope. Him, scared? Never!

(He was glad no one was around to hear the yelp that may or may not have come out when a particularly inventive shadow looked a bit like Uncle Bartholomew.)

Would it be better to just curl up with his cloak and sleep? He was tired and hungry and thirsty and cold and he wasn’t sure he liked school anymore. It wasn’t like anything bad would happen to him if he took a nap. There weren’t gh-

An involuntary shiver went through the small boy as he remembered the Welcome Feast. The Bloody Baron would probably eat him or something. No sleep for him, no siree!

He was now so deep into the maze of death that was the Hogwarts dungeons that there was no indication of whether it was night or day. If he’d been somewhere else (like, say, the Ravenclaw common room), he would have seen that the sun was rising and he’d been wandering for an awful long time. He’d stopped breathing through his mouth to try and stop his throat feeling so dry.

He reached a dead end (hadn’t the entrance to the common room been a dead end? Had he found it?) and looked around hopefully. There was no one there. He tried the password he’d heard the Prefect say, but nothing happened. He tried asking nicely. Nothing happened. He tried kicking the wall. Something happened, but that something was only that there was a soft crunch and his toe hurt very, very much.

Turning around and taking the other fork, he continued wandering, sure that it was a lost cause.

***

No one worried too much about a couple of Slytherin Firsties going missing at the beginning of each year. It always happened, and they would turn up eventually. One particularly memorable year, they’d ended up not coming out of the dungeons at all, but emerged gasping from behind a tapestry on the Sixth Floor. To this day, no one knew how they got there.

Mortimer Forney was simply the unlucky one this year. Teachers nodded knowingly when they saw he was missing from his first day of classes, making a note to see if he’d emerged by lunchtime. (He hadn’t.) If he still hadn’t returned by breakfast the next day, a search party was organised.

They found him that night at eleven-thirty, emerging from what seemed to be a dead-end on the second floor. He was wild-eyed and gibbering about a classroom that housed a giant chicken that spoke. (The Charms professor wrote it off as delirium, but the Astronomy professor muttered, “Grendel,” and was seen trying to get Mortimer to explain where he’d found it.)


End file.
